The recent Iran nuclear agreement is often described as the culmination of one and a half years negotiations, presumably referring to John Kerry leading the American effort. In fact so far as the Obama administration effort is involved there has been a constant, often desperate appearing negotiation beginning almost immediately following President Obama taking office more than six years ago. Neither did Obama mark the beginning of “negotiations” since President Bush also was negotiating with the Iranians for much of his term in office. Whatever may or not have gone on behind the scenes the “negotiation” was described by his repeated threats to use military force should the Iranians not end their nuclear program. Of course Bush never carried through on his threats and it took little time for Iran to see through the bluff and gain confidence and prestige by facing down the Great Satan.
Bush replaced Defense Secretary Rumsfeld with Robert Gates and followed that with the appointment of Admiral Mullen as his Chief of the General Staff. The administration message to Iran and the Arab states and Israel, America’s “allies” in the region, could not have been more explicit: the president’s defense chiefs, Gates/Mullen, often warned not the Iranians but the Bush Administration itself that military action was off the table, that it could result in “unforeseen consequences.” Whether Bush’s defense team feared one more military failure following Iraq and Afghanistan or the consequence of war with Iran interfering with oil supplies and pushing the world already mired in the Great Recession into even deeper depression was never made clear. What was clear was that the administration had no heart for chancing the potential fallout; the distance between “warning” and “intent” for Bush was wide indeed. Yet another evidence of non-intent was the administration charade of one day warning Iran by giving Israel a “green light” to attack, the next day permission withdrawn, a “red light.”
Over the months and years President Obama, following the well-trodden path established by his predecessor, has repeated the hollow threat to Iran that “all options are on the table,” promised regional allies and the American pubic that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” From the start such “warnings” sounded insincere and were understood as “spin” intended to quiet criticism, buying time for the president to follow his quixotic dream, pursuit of an Iranian “peace in our time.”
The attached article addresses the only possibility for the US Government to back away from this dangerous agreement an awash in “unintended consequences.” Unless Congress acts the main “unintended consequence” resulting from the Iran Agreement will be a nuclear arms race in the least stable area of the world, legacy to Obama having entered office promising to reverse nuclear proliferation.
White House Instructs Allies To Lean Heavily On the ‘Jewish Community’ to Force Iran Deal
White House strategy is to target Jewish groups and employ "Jewish voices" ( such as Jack Lew) in its latest push to blunt criticism and reassure a very worried public on Obama's pending Iran deal. {Documentation: recording of the strategy conference call + interviews with experts familiar with the call.}
The White House’s liaison to the Jewish community on Monday advised dozens of "progressive" groups" to push a poll commissioned and distributed by J Street, which has been actively lobbying for suppoort of a deal with Iran.Matt Nosanchuk, an official in the White House Office of Public Engagement, who also serves as Jewish liaison, urged liberal activists present on the call to cite J Street’s poll when defending Obama"s deal with Iran.
The PRIVATE strategy call, which included more than 100 participants, was organized by the Ploughshares Fund, a group that has spent millions of dollars to slant Iran-related coverage and protect the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts.
Virtually all polling stretching back several months, including polling featured on conservative and progressive outlets shows that most Americans believe that a deal would not prevent Iran from constructing a nuclear weapon. Critics of J Street’s poll have pointed out that it polled respondents on a hypothetical deal with numerous iron-clad safeguards, a deal that does not actually exist.
“The lies this White House and its allies will tell about this deal seem to know no bounds, and now there exists the audiotape to prove it,” said a top official with a leading pro-Israel group. “No matter the facts of the deal, they will send Americans to lie to each other to further Obama’s legacy.”
Nosanchuk’s role in organizing the call confirms suspicions that the White House is targeting the Jewish community as part of its campaign against critics who accuse the administration of having made excessive concessions to Iran.
“This is a White House that has, from the very beginning of nuclear negotiations with Iran, used whatever Jewish groups it could find as cover for making staggering concessions to the Iranians,” said the official, who would only speak on background, citing concerns that the administration has been known to retaliate against critics in the Jewish world. “Apparently some groups haven’t learned their lesson yet—or, like J Street, don’t seem to want to learn.”…“It leaves a bad taste in the mouth that the White House Jewish Liaison is leading efforts to sell the Iran deal to the American public,” said the source, who also expressed fear about discussing the issue on record. “This is a matter that concerns all Americans. It seems the administration sees advantages in compartmentalizing this as a Jewish, pro-Israel issue instead of a broader national security issue."
President Barack Obama acknowledged in an interview months ago that the deal would, after roughly a decade, leave Iran months away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.